Thursday, August 04, 2005

Hey cats and kittens, I'm here to thrown down my Pull List for Wednesday, August 3rd. I still haven't actually read any of these, as I'm broke as a joke. Tomorrow, luckily, is payday, and for anyone wondering, this...

I also like to buy comics.This post is being written while I listen to The Theme From S.W.A.T., which to be honest, is a breathtaking piece of funk.

Here Are The Comics That Get Me All Tingly:

- Serenity #2;

I don't consider myself one of the number of terrifying Joss Whedon fans roaming around free. My friend Jeremy is one of their ilk, and he startles me sometimes with his passion for everything the man touches, especially considering I spent some time talking him into watching a stray episode of Buffy: The Vampire Slayer here and there on FX. That's right, I love love love the first four seasons of Buffy: TVS, and Angel is no slouch either. It's not going to change the world; it's just quality television. Now he owns every season of Angel and Buffy on DVD, and the man hounded me, literally followed me around and told me to watch Whedon's much-revered Firefly.

I vaguely remember catching an episode on TV (one of the rare instances Fox decided to actually show it), and was not impressed. I'm not going to go into how a canceled television show became a feature film and a comic book spin-off three years later, as the tale is told all up and down the web. FireflyFans.net is a good place if you're interested.

The thing that made me cave into his poking and prodding was actually the trailer for the film Serenity. The trailer looked like a ton of fun, I'm a big fan of Westerns when mixed with another genre (Trigun, The Quick and the Dead, Desperadoes), so I got all excited. I did not, however, want to be lost, so I borrowed the DVDs. I can now say without hesitation that it is Whedon's best stuff, and now The Lady is absolutely nuts about it, too. Maybe later I'll espouse my love for it more fully, but for now just take in that I liked it, and the comic is pretty good too.A lot of people complain about alternate covers. My feelings are as long as they're shipped 50%/50% or in this case 33%/33%/34%, then it's a great thing. It gives people more choices and they can get the cover that appeals to them the most. In this case, happily, it serves a function! There are nine characters featured in Firefly, and three issues of the miniseries, so voila! Three alternate covers for each.

There was a year in high school where I doodled incessantly, trying to design graffiti. I wanted to make art that seemed like it was always in motion, that felt fierce and maleable and too-cool-for-school. I wanted to draw like Jim Mahfood.

Like a million other Kevin Smith fans, I discovered Mahfood's work in Clerks: The Comic Book one-shot. Oddly enough, since I usually worship at The Altar of Smith, I was more taken by the thick lines, hard angles and dynamic poses of the art than the appropriately verbose word-balloons. So I snatched up everything that was available by 'Food, which at the time was Grrl Scouts, a comic about three lady drug dealers who deliver their goods inside cookie boxes. It was originally put out by Oni Press, but if you don't have it Image has re-released the trade as well as a trade for it's follow-up Grrl Scouts: Work Sucks. Grrl Scouts has humor, wit, social commentary and revolution, sex, drugs, and violence - everything that makes a story great. It also had Mahfood's art, which, if you hadn't caught on, is dazzling. Basically since then I've picked up everything with his name on it, and I don't think I've been disappointed once.

Stupid Comics is more focused on the first three things that made Grrl Scouts great, with a healthy enough dose of the last three to make it still realistic and keep it from getting preachy. These issues are released sporadically, and worth picking up whenever they show up at the shop.

- Gotham Central #34;

Six issues from being replaced by a title called Streets of Gotham, Central is one of the most compelling books I pick up month to month. Both Greg Rucka and Ed Brubaker know exactly how to pace a mystery for a monthly comic, better than almost anyone else (I'll get to Brain K. Vaughn in a minute). I don't know how I can praise this book more than I've already done in previous posts... Read it, peoples! This is part two of the Dead Robin story-arc, with a pretty swanky Usual Suspects/Teen Titans cover. At least one book I get this month featuring the Titans will be good... Yeesh. Can't wait to pick up the book, and excited to hear more about Streets of Gotham from Wizard World: Chicago this weekend.

- Y: The Last Man #36;

I told you I'd get to Brian K. Vaughn in a minute. It takes a great deal of guts to publish a comic book monthly that always, always, always ends in a cliffhanger. Luckily Vaughn has the writing chops to do it. The story of the last man on earth traveling from New York to Australia trying to reach his fiance is funny, romantic in both the lovey-dovey and grand adventure sense, action packed, and just plain brilliant.

In this issue, the artist who started the book with Vaughn, Pia Guerra comes back to tell the tale of the aforementioned fiance, who we got brief glimpses of earlier in the series. I'd say that this was a good jumping-on point for new readers, but the first trade is 11.95, a price point so low that it makes an even better jumping-on point. And to even one-up that, Vertigo makes the first issue available for download right here! What a swell bunch of gals and chaps.

- Metal Gear Solid #11;

Only one issue left of this adaptation of my favorite modern video-game, and the it's, "Snake? Snake?... SNAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAKE?!?!"

Ashley Wood does art chores on it, and it's right pretty. Maybe I should check out Pop-Bot?

- Ultimate Spider-Man #81;

People accuse Brian Bendis of writing "talking heads" too much, and usually I argue fervently with them. The man knows how to write, be it action, comedy, noir, whatever's appropriate. But even I found it a little silly in the last issue when Spidey had a big fight with Ultimate Moon Knight of all people, and then sat down to a slice of pizza and five page-chat with the Kingpin. Still, if I don't like one issue out of eighty then the title's doing pretty good. This one continues the Moon Knight (is it a Moon Knight story?) arc...

That's it for me this week, thank god it's light as things have built up so badly that I'll need a burro or some other pack animal just to get the comics home.